I can’t be in a place that’s gone on
as if my father never existed.
Twenty-Five Days After
My cousin Wilson shows up at the house
on Tuesday afternoon
& sits at the kitchen table,
hugs Mami tight, compliments her hair.
She runs a hand through the strands
that I swear she hasn’t washed in four weeks.
Wilson takes a deep breath. Says he wants to marry
his girlfriend, how he’s too afraid to ask.
Mami & I look awkwardly at each other,
congratulate him. But Wilson shakes his head.
“A campesino like me, what have I got to offer?”
Wilson has lived in New York City since he was ten.
He’s definitely not a campesino anymore.
I don’t know any peasant rocking designer sweatpants
& Tom Ford cologne; don’t know any rural Dominican
who drinks only expensive whiskey.
But Wilson says the ring he wants to buy his girlfriend
is out of his price range.
& I want to know, what’s a bank teller’s price range?
& did his girl care about price range when she got with him?
But Mami simply gets up from the table
& grabs her checkbook.
I turn away as she slides the check on the table,
but before I do I see she wrote down four figures.
Cucarachas is what I want to call
my mother’s family.
How the last few days
they’ve started creeping up from the woodwork.
These same cousins who called me ugly
want to suck up & say how beautiful I’ve grown,
how tragic the loss of my father.
The aunts & uncles who said my mom
should have married a lighter-skinned man
all of a sudden want to tell my mother
about this new liposuction procedure they want,
or a church mission trip they’ve been meaning to take;
a dream wedding they can’t afford,
or hospital bills they haven’t paid.
Since learning about the advance,
someone new visits every day,
& soon my tongue morphs into a broom:
“Pa’ fuera, all of you. Leave us alone.
We are not a fucking bank.”
Mami says I’m being rude by turning family away.
I tell her her family is being rude by asking for money.
Mami says this is what family does, helps each other.
I tell her our family should be helping us plan the funeral.
Mami doesn’t say this is a difficult time.
I tell her, Mami, I’m not sure you are thinking straight.
Mami looks away from me & gets up to leave the kitchen.
I ask her what it is she isn’t saying.
Mami stops at the doorway, her back to me.
I brace my arms for impact.
Mami tells me, you always loved him so much.
I nod silently; at least that much is true.
Mami says, even as smart as you are you ignored the signs.
I don’t ask her what she means, but she keeps talking anyway.
Mami tells me, I wish I’d stopped loving Yano a long time ago.
I don’t have to ask if that’s a lie.
Mami tells me, you don’t know how he’s embarrassed me.
I want to cover my ears like a little girl—
Mami tells me, & if this death money
will unshame me with my family, so be it.
Camino Yahaira
Twenty-Eight Days After
I have been avoiding the beach for days.
I stretch my arms wide on my bed, & my legs too.
I fan my hair out all around me.
Inside me something has shrunk, but I want to be
deserving of all the space around me. Even as I realize
this space might not be ours for long.
I think about the electric bill for the generator,
the phone bills, the internet bill, the school tuition.
I think about Columbia. I think about New York City.
Tía tells me the funeral will be covered by my father’s wife.
My stomach turns over at the thought: my father’s secret wife.
My father’s secret life. What I’ve wished & worked for:
sand running through my fingers.
I do not ask Tía, but am pretty sure,
this other girl has my same last name.
Papi was married to her mother, just like mine.
Yahaira is a great name. & I wonder if he picked it.
I could see my father lovingly saying the syllables.
I search the internet for this name.
It means to light, or to shine. & I wonder
if she was a bulb in my father’s heart. I wonder
if she was so bright he kept returning for her
when he could have stayed here with me.
I wonder if she’s known about me her whole life.
I wonder if her light was why he was there when she was born.
I’m the child her father left her for in the summers.
While she is the child my father left me for my entire life.
I do not want to hate a girl with a glowing name.
But I cannot help the anger planted in my chest, fanning
its palm leaves wide & casting a shadow on all I’ve known.
I wonder what kind of girl learns she is almost a millionaire
& doesn’t at all wonder about the girl across the ocean
she will be denying food. Tuition. A dream.
Unless she doesn’t know about me.
I wonder what college she wants to go to.
I wonder if she will now be able to afford it.
They have ignored me my whole life, those people over there.
But one thing I learned from the Saints,
when the crossroads are open to you, you must decide a path.
I will not stand still while the world makes my choices.
This Yahaira
will learn
what carving your own way means.
Social media seemed like the easiest way to search
two hours ago, but with so many girls named Yahaira Rios
I haven’t stopped scrolling faces
trying to find a girl who looks like me.
I am about to quit when I see a profile
but the picture is only a black box, & the date
my father died.
Although the profile is private,
I can see some posts, including condolence messages.
“Tío Yano was a great man. He’s in heaven now, RIP,”
a boy named Wilson has written. “I will always miss Pops,”
writes a girl named Andrea. & my heart thumps in my chest,
& my fingers shake over the tablet as I press the message button.
I write a quick sentence & press Send before I can stop myself.
There is no way she can’t know who I am once she sees it.
After I send the message,
I refresh the page
at least fifty times waiting for a response.
I walk into the kitchen to get some crackers.
I wash some dishes that are in the sink.
I dust the altar. Refill the vases with fresh water.
Then return to my tablet.
Still no response.
There is no time difference where my sister is,
which means it is late afternoon.
Maybe she is busy
being rich & hanging out with her mother
& not thinking about me.
I check the message one more time.
It does not show it’s been read.
It does not show it’s been opened.
I almost wish I cou
ld unsend the message.
But no, she deserves to read it.
I deserve to know & be known.
I turn off my tablet.
Tía & I go to El Malecón, where my parents re-met.
She carries a fresh jar of molasses & a watermelon;
I haul the honeyed rum. La Virgen de Regla loves sweets.
Tía & I pray over the offerings; reciting the names
of our ancestors. We kiss the rind, the jar, the glass bottle
holding the rum.
We touch these items to our foreheads,
then we touch them to our hearts. I breathe the salty air,
the rush of waves against stone joins us in our prayers.
We pour a bit of homemade mamajuana into the water,
& Tía doesn’t even stop me when I take a sip from the bottle.
I am feeling guilty. I wonder if the girl in New York
didn’t know about me, if a random message online
might be a heavy thing to carry.
At least I had Tía’s honest & open face tell me the truth,
not a random pixelated image. I pour my thick guilt
into the water as well. The patron saint of the ocean
is known for containing many parts of herself:
she is a nurturer, but she is also a ferocious defender.
& so I remember that to walk this world
you must be kind but also fierce.
After our trip to El Malecón,
I walk back home & straight into my room.
I pull out my tablet & turn it back on.
My breath catches in my chest.
I search social media—
still no notification.
I stop myself just before
I throw the tablet at the wall.
I was not born to patience.
I grab a sack
& load it with
a small bag of rice
& one of beans.
Soon, I don’t know how
Tía & I will eat,
but for now
we still have more
than the other people
who live here.
I walk to Carline’s.
Waving to neighbors,
avoiding potholes,
letting the sun
warm the skin on my back.
At her house,
Maman ushers me in,
her eyes tired,
& when I look at Carline
I can tell she’s been crying.
I pass the sack to Maman,
giving her an extra-tight hug
hoping it offers comfort.
She hugs me tightly back,
& for a second
I think she is also
offering comfort to me.
When she walks out back
to el fogón,
the open fire where she cooks,
I sit on the couch
& gently pull Luciano
from Carline & onto my chest.
I can tell she
doesn’t want to let him go,
but also that she needs a moment
to collect herself.
I do not ask what happened.
She tells me herself.
“I lost my job.
They wanted me to start coming in.
But how could I leave him so soon? How?”
I nod along,
humming to Luciano.
His lashes flutter
against his small dark cheek.
I read somewhere
that even this little,
when they sleep babies can dream.
Since I do not have my father’s pull,
I cannot make empty promises
about jobs or positions I can get for Carline.
“I just wish I could stay with my baby.
If only I could make miracles like Tía.”
Tía already has an apprentice. Me.
& even I cannot wield miracles the way she can.
I don’t want to make light
of what Carline just told me.
I also know she needs a distraction.
So I tell her about my sister.
I tell her I reached out.
Carline gasps at all the right moments
& clutches my hand.
She nods in agreement.
“You did what you had to do, Camino.”
I am not the kind of girl
who looks for approval.
But a weight lifts off my chest.
I did what must be done.
Camino Yahaira
The last time I saw my parents kiss
I was pretty small.
But it’s still hard to hear
that your own mother wasn’t happy.
Papi was always smiling, always full
of words & joy.
I wish I knew the rift
that grew this sea between them.
I used to think it was me, that Papi
& I had chess.
That maybe Mami was jealous
it wasn’t something she shared.
But even when I started painting nails
& asking about her job
Mami still had an air around Papi,
like he was a medicine she knew she needed
even as she cringed at the taste.
But now I wonder
if it was always more than that.
Maybe Mami knew about the other woman?
Even without seeing the certificate.
I think of how the word unhappy houses
so many unanswered questions.
Thirty-One Days After
Tía Lidia comes to dinner Monday night.
It is mostly silent until she asks me about my college essay;
I mention I’m rethinking the schools I want to apply to.
Mami looks up from her plate of arroz con guandules, surprised.
“Just because I’m not your father doesn’t mean I don’t care.
You didn’t tell me you scrapped your list, Yahaira.
We only have each other, you know. & he,
he always had more people in his life than he needed.”
Her tone is a serrated knife.
I become a feast of anger.
But before I can reply to her
she throws her fork down on the plate & leaves,
dragging her footsteps so her chancletas slur drunkenly to her room.
Tía Lidia puts her hand over mine. “Your mother is having
a tough time. Their marriage wasn’t easy, & she has so much
she’s dealing with. Yano was a great father to you,
& I know you loved him, but he wasn’t always a great husband.”
& I don’t know how one man can be so many different things
to the people he was closest to. But I nod. I almost slip & ask
does everyone know? But if they don’t I can’t be the one
to reveal the dirt on my father’s name.
Once, I had a tournament in Memphis.
Both Mami & Papi came.
It’s a happy memory. Not just because I won
but because we went on a boat tour
of the Mississippi River. & the sun shone bright,
& the tour guide had this amazing voice
that made you want to lean into his words.
& he kept saying, “Ships have gone down in this water,
gold has been lost here, the banks have eroded,
cities have been built & destroyed at its shores,
tribes have crossed it & never crossed back.
But the Mississippi rises & falls; it rises & falls.
Everything changes, but the water rises & falls.”
& for some reason, I think of that memory
& that tournament as Mami huffs around the house.
Some things continue forever. Maybe anger is like a river,
maybe it crumbles everything around it, maybe it hides
so many skeletons beneath the rolling surface.
Thirty-Five Days After
For the first time in weeks, I log on to social media.
I have comments from friends.
I have reminders of birthdays & events,
& I have one new friend request
from a girl I don’t know in Sosúa, Dominican Republic.
She has my same last name: Rios. Camino Rios.
She is slightly lighter complexioned
than my velvet brown,
her eyes are big & piercing,
& her smile looks familiar.
There is a message with the request,
but I can’t stop looking at her profile picture.
Because this Camino girl isn’t alone in the photo;
she is in a red bathing suit, my father’s arm
thrown around her shoulders
as they laugh in the sunlight.
An awful sinking feeling
almost stops my breath.
A feeling I cannot name is growing in my chest.
It is large & large & large
& before it expands inside my throat
& chokes me, I yell for Mami.
She shuffles into the room
with more speed than I’ve seen her
demonstrate in days.
I point to the screen:
“Have you ever seen this picture?
I don’t know this girl. Why is he with this girl?”
On a hard breath, she slaps her hand
against her chest, as if trying to press
a pause button on her heart.
“Who is this, Ma? A cousin
I don’t know about? Who is this?”
But I can see my guesses are wrong.
“I know he was your hero, Yahaira.
& I tried my best
to make sure he would remain so.
But that girl that girl is the daughter
from your father’s other family.”
My father not only had another wife.
He also had another child.
I have to close my laptop because
all my shaking hands want to do
is sweep the entire thing off my desk.
I want to see the image of my father
& this girl shattered against the floor.
How could an entire person exist
who shares half my DNA
& no one thought to tell me?
In all the time I held
what I thought was a massive secret
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